ROBERT COSTA: Hello. I'm Robert Costa. And this is the Washington Week Podcast.
Joining me: Michael Schmidt, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning national security
reporter with The New York Times; Susan Glasser, staff writer and author of the weekly
column Letter From Trump's Washington for The New Yorker; and Rosalind Helderman,
political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post, who won a
Pulitzer Prize this year for her coverage of President Trump and the Russia probe.
President's Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen pled guilty Thursday to lying to
Congress about President Trump's involvement in a plan to build a hotel, a Trump Tower,
in Moscow. At the same time, Russia was escalating attempts to interfere in the 2016
presidential election. Cohen worked with Trump for many, many years as his fixer.
And there are two other names, however, that come up in the Mueller probe that we want to
talk about here: conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi and political strategist Roger Stone,
both Trump loyalists, or Trump allies to say the least. Corsi refused a plea deal from
the special counsel because he said he was being asked to lie by Mueller's team.
Stone is suspected of being a conduit between WikiLeaks and the Trump presidential
campaign; it's a charge that he denies. Stone, Corsi - let's start with Corsi, Ros.
You think about this figure. He's kind of popped out of nowhere to be this major figure
in the last few weeks. What do you make of Corsi and what it tells us about Mueller's probe?
ROSALIND HELDERMAN: Yeah, this is such a sort of strange collection of characters in
this portion of the story. Jerome Corsi, InfoWars guy, the guy who really kind of
popularized and help bring to Donald Trump's attention the fake birther theory that
President Obama was not born in this country. He seems key, as far as we can tell,
because he has now said that he told Roger Stone in August 2016 that WikiLeaks had
John Podesta's emails. That's sort of astounding. He claims that he sort of just
surmised this; he looked at what had been released by the - by the WikiLeaks in
July, didn't see Podesta emails, and decided they must have John Podesta's emails.
You know, maybe not so surprisingly, apparently the special counsel's office does not
believe that, and they have been pressuring him to find out who his link to WikiLeaks was
so that they can kind of draw a link - Wikileaks, Corsi, Stone, then maybe Trump.
ROBERT COSTA: Susan, talking about WikiLeaks and Russia, how do you see that link?
Is there a link between Russian intelligence at some level, based on a lot of reporting, and
WikiLeaks and Julian Assange? Because that seems to be the key, as Mueller looks at it at least.
SUSAN GLASSER: Well, that's right. I mean, again, it does appear from what has been
publicly available and what has been reported, you know, by many journalistic
colleagues in addition, that they're - essentially, WikiLeaks operated as a
dissemination arm for Russian intelligence - the GRU, which is the Russian
military intelligence - in the case of the 2016 U.S. election hacking.
And, you know, if you reconceive, then, potentially of, you know, how we've thought about
WikiLeaks in general, not as some crusading global entity but perhaps as a - it started
out that way, who knows - but essentially became captured, or that one of their major
sources of information and the function that they seem to have served for a number of
years was as a conduit for Russian disinformation or information and having that be
weaponized to affect, by the way, the political process not just in the United States,
but in the U.K., in other European elections. And so I think that really changes
how we should think about WikiLeaks and even just the nature of what this entity is.
ROBERT COSTA: What about Roger Stone?
His phone calls with President Trump under scrutiny by Robert Mueller, Mike?
MICHAEL SCHMIDT: Yeah, and a lot more than his phone calls; the entire relationship and
what was going from WikiLeaks to the campaign.
And an interesting wrinkle in the Corsi bit this week is that Corsi put out his plea
deal, his draft plea deal that he never signed with Mueller's office, and in it was a
line about how Corsi knew that the president was in touch with Stone.
And what we found out was that several weeks ago, as Trump was preparing to send in his
responses to the questions from Mueller, his lawyers found out about this language in the
plea deal, and they thought to the average eye it looked like Mueller was trying to say
the president was an unindicted co-conspirator. And this really bothered them, and they
slammed the brakes on sending in the responses until they got assurances from Mueller's
office that something larger was not afoot. They sent them in. Now they see the Cohen
deal this week, where Cohen pleads guilty; they still think something else is going on.
ROBERT COSTA: Ros, can you explain that in the sense of how did Jerome Corsi and Trump's
lawyers have this kind of knowledge about each other's activities and their standing?
Is there an agreement of sorts, some relationship?
ROSALIND HELDERMAN: Well, it's interesting, there is an agreement.
They are in a joint defense agreement, so the lawyers are sharing information.
But our understanding is that Trump's team did not receive the agreement through that
agreement; in fact, they received it through another party that has not yet been identified.
You can only imagine how angry that has likely made the special counsel's office, that
they are in confidential plea negotiations with someone - you know, that usually happens
because they believe that they are giving them a good deal; they are not charging that
person with as much as they could be charged with - and somehow that information ends up
in the hand of the president's attorneys.
ROBERT COSTA: How would that happen, Ros?
ROSALIND HELDERMAN: Let's wait and find out.
ROBERT COSTA: You have a thought, Susan, on this?
SUSAN GLASSER: Well, you know, I mean, just in general, I would like to just pull out
for a second to say, like, you know, the details are so extraordinary they're each worth
lavishing time over. It's just breathtaking, though, to, you know, examine any one of
these in the context of what we know about the American presidency.
And, you know, I just - I feel like that's worth saying at least once in conversation.
For example, the idea of the president of the United States being in a joint defense
agreement with someone like this figure of Jerome Corsi is truly breathtaking to me.
You know, we're talking about a kind of conspiracy theorist, propagandist, as you pointed
out one of the leading people to advance the false conspiracy theory that Barack Obama
was not born in the United States. OK, this is, again, really extraordinary.
Today you had the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, put out a statement from
the White House, an official government statement - she's an official; she's a paid
government employee of the United States - talking about the hoax, the rigged witch hunt
hoax that the government of the United States is apparently carrying out against the
president of the United States. Again, this is not something that we should just sort
of say, like, oh, well, you know, isn't that just a quirk of this White House.
Regardless of how these legal issues play out, I just - this week has been one of those
weeks that, for me, that's really hit home.
ROBERT COSTA: Susan, you've spent - sorry, Mike.
MICHAEL SCHMIDT: But you don't even mention the most -
SUSAN GLASSER: (Chuckles.) No, I didn't mention the -
ROBERT COSTA: She can't mention everything.
MICHAEL SCHMIDT: No, no, no, hold on, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
But this week, Rudy Giuliani said that they were getting real-time information from Paul
Manafort's lawyer, Paul Manafort who was cooperating, and Rudy said that Mueller's
investigators were pressuring Manafort to give up information that Trump knew about this
2016 meeting that his son had with Russians offering dirt. And Giuliani's saying that
they - that they didn't believe Manafort when he said he didn't know anything about that.
And that is, like, I mean - we lose perspective a lot. And to just hear that and to
think that Mueller's investigators think that Manafort's not telling the truth when they
say that - when he says, you know, I don't think the president knew about the meeting.
I mean, if you're the president's lawyers, that's a troubling development.
ROBERT COSTA: What do you think about that, Ros, about the Manafort and the Mueller relationship?
ROSALIND HELDERMAN: I mean, it's extraordinary.
And, you know, the amount of topics about which we may find that they - I mean, there was
some reporting from The Wall Street Journal that one of the topics that they believe that
Manafort was lying about was his relationship with this Russian assistant he had who ran
his Kiev office, Konstantin Kilimnik. Konstantin Kilimnik has been assessed by the U.S.
government to have ties to Russian intelligence. He met with Paul Manafort in the spring
of 2016 and then on August 2nd of 2016, right in the heart of the Russian interference
in the election. He was his liaison to the - to the oligarch.
He was Paul Manafort's liaison to the oligarch, Deripaska, Oleg Deripaska.
So if Bob Mueller believes that Paul Manafort has not been honest about his contacts with
Konstantin Kilimnik, that is an extraordinarily interesting development.
ROBERT COSTA: When you think about all these Russian figures, does anything stand out
about these relationships with Manafort?
You mentioned a little bit of this during the show, Susan, but any thoughts on that?
SUSAN GLASSER: Yeah. Well, you mentioned Deripaska.
I brought him up on the show as well because he is the central nexus in a way connecting
Manafort and his activities inside Ukraine for the, essentially, deposed former President
Viktor Yanukovych, who is Russia supported, and Deripaska, a Kremlin-connected oligarch,
you know, and gateway into the world of Russian money.
And, you know, again, I just can't emphasize enough for people, like, this is
extraordinary, the people who are in business with figures who are some of the wealthiest
and most potentially corrupt figures you could deal with on an international level.
To have them brought into the United States campaign and, again -
ROBERT COSTA: What about even Vladimir Putin?
There were reports that Felix Sater, I believe, an associate of Michael Cohen, there was
talk of a $50 million penthouse apartment in Trump Tower Moscow for Putin.
SUSAN GLASSER: Right. So I'm glad you brought this up because this is one thing I have
to say. First of all, can you imagine any normal country in which you would think that it
made sense if you wanted to do a real estate deal that you would get in touch with the
president of the country? No, unless you were corrupt, you assumed the president, you
know, him or herself to be corrupt and those around him. Presidents don't decide on real
estate deals unless there's a system that is not functioning in a transparent manner -
number one. Number two, you know, the Russian system is a system of basically
state-captured corruption. And Putin sits at the top of it. He's been reported by U.S.
sources, who have looked into this, to be worth extraordinary sums of money and the idea
that this was the dream of Donald Trump to do business with these people.
Also, again, I come back to in the middle of the presidential campaign, OK?
So this - if I told you, without any names, like, well, there's a story about a
presidential candidate of one country, who has a decent chance to become the president of
that country, who wants to get into business with the president of another country and is
asking for their help -
ROBERT COSTA: Right. Well, the question - the question is, does it break norms or break the law?
SUSAN GLASSER: Or both.
ROBERT COSTA: Final thought. When you look back at this week, who - I know you don't
want to speculate, but based on your reporting, who's more important, who could be a
bigger headache for President Trump? Michael Cohen or Paul Manafort?
ROSALIND HELDERMAN: Oh, God, that's a hard one.
ROBERT COSTA: Ros?
ROSALIND HELDERMAN: I mean, I think they're both extraordinary headaches.
I don't know that I can choose between them. Mike?
MICHAEL SCHMIDT: I think it's Cohen because, you know, Manafort has at least shown
willing to allow his lawyers to talk with the president's lawyers about what's going on.
It wasn't happening on Cohen's side. Mueller just tore up his agreement with Manafort.
I'm sure Mueller didn't want to do that, so they're sort of averse to each other.
And always, you know, there's an interesting transparency about what the president says
sometimes publicly, has stood by Manafort time and time again publicly, not stood by Cohen.
ROBERT COSTA: We'll leave it there. That's it for this edition of the Washington Week
Podcast. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on the Washington Week
website. While you're online, check out the Washington Week-ly News Quiz.
I'm Robert Costa. See you next time.